Blurred frontiers between law and politics
Panama-gate was more political than legal. But the Supreme Court either didn’t figure out its exact implications or it acted under pressure. Whatever the reason was, it has landed itself in a bigger problem than it initially was in.
Consider the following.
Both parties in the case, the petitioners and the accused, were/are on weak legal footing. The PTI has no evidence that can stand the rigors of law. Its case is mostly based on statements made in its rallies. And it believes in the veracity of its allegations because of its belief in its own self-righteousness.
On the other hand is PML-N which has skeletons in its cupboard but which have become so old that only rigorous evidence, like that of a DNA test can make them recognisable. But the PM and his family members have piled up huge political evidence against themselves in the shape of contradictory statements. The legal gimmickry that members of PM’s legal team use is adding to that burden though they are successful in creating sufficient doubt in the minds of the judges to benefit their client.
PML-N’s reliance is mainly on the established principle of law according to which everyone is innocent until proven guilty. It has no reliable document to present in the SC – unless you treat the letter of that Qatari prince as ‘reliable’ – about its source of income or a convincing money trail. It has so far denied presenting the ‘relevant record’, apparently using lacunas in the law.
But legal is just one side. Of critical importance here is the political aspect which seems to be dominating, rather dictating, the flow of events. If the SC apparently erred by jumping into a matter which it could stay out of, it equally allowed the situation to become politically more explosive by allowing both the parties to argue their cases before the media outside the courtroom. It could have restrained them to keep quite but it didn’t.
The result was that loudmouths from both sides would fall over each other to reach the rolling cameras soon after the hearing ended. Each party tried to interpret the proceedings inside the courtroom as a victory of its respective side. If one said, ‘the case (of the other party) ended today’, the other claimed, the opponents ‘ran from the court today’. This created different kind of impact on different audience; raising their expectations high to unrealistic levels, giving a false impression about the ‘correctness’ of the party of one’s liking.
In the end, however, the case politically went against the PML-N, bringing the judiciary under huge moral pressure. But why was it so when the PTI’s case against it was legally weak?
There were two main reasons behind this; 1) the decades-old narrative built by the powers that be against the ‘corrupt politicians’, which made everything dirty stick when thrown on them, and 2) the allegations of financial misappropriation against the Sharifs had a heavier element of truth. It is another matter that there is no sufficient evidence to prove those past malpractices.
In the absence of a credible legal case against the ruling family, it was mainly the efforts of a particular party to create a political hype through media mainly in urban areas of the country. This apparently compelled the superior judiciary to intervene in this matter a time when a potentially violent showdown became imminent in Islamabad.
Hence, it was a rather ‘willful’ intervention on the part of judiciary in a matter that was more political than legal. But it is now apparent that it jumped without thinking.
Well, not as such; but almost.
There were considerations, of course, for the Supreme Court to take matters in its hands. First and foremost was that other institutions/departments failed to address the issue and a point had reached when – according to the outgoing Chief Justice – a judicial intervention was called for. Second, there was serious apprehensions about a violent outburst if it didn’t intervene to defuse the situation arising out of PTI’s call of a lockdown of the capital. Third, there was a growing public pressure on it to intervene and dispense justice when there was a great hue and cry about political corruption. Fourth, the judiciary had to suffer a great deal of damage to its credibility, were it seen a detached bystander to an issue that is generally (though wrongly) perceived as the mother of all evils in society.
There is another underlying factor at play which possibly led the SC to take up something that was better solved outside the court by political actors rather than the judges. It seems the Supreme Court is not willing to surrender the political space it has lately acquired. Nobody, here, likes to lose the exaggerated clout – no matter if it actually means crossing into someones else’s jurisdiction – and risk irrelevancy.
Though done may be in good faith, acts that don’t fall within the purview of a state institution mostly result in undesirable consequences. The Supreme Court judges apparently didn’t think about the negative fallouts; but which are so obvious now.
Though the outgoing CJ categorically stated at a recent event at LHC that courts are not under any pressure and they can’t decide to please anyone, the fact of the matter is that courts don’t work in a vacuum. They are subject to different kinds of pressures in a given situation. It is obvious from the SC conduct in the instant matter. If the SC was not under any pressure why did it ask the parties in what manner they wanted justice to be dispensed? And why it left the matter undecided and ordered it to be taken up afresh?
Such are the vagaries of time.
SC intervention in the Panama case has cost it dearly, though it is also true that it would have suffered had it remained aloof. At the moment it has compromised its position to the extent that it is being threatened and dictated by one of the parties. It has resulted in the erosion of its authority and an aggressive, shameful campaign (spearheaded by vested interests) against honorable judges individually and the judiciary as an institution; with the ultimate looser being the democratic system.
The situation currently seems to be that instead of deciding a matter, the court is getting the case decided for it. So, the golden rule next time can be: There are some things that are too political to be left to the judges.